The Record: Contemporary Art & Vinyl

Original Traveling Exhibition

September 02, 2010 – February 06, 2011

Transformative Power of the Vinyl Record

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl was the first museum exhibition to explore the culture of vinyl records within the history of contemporary art. Bringing together artists from around the world who work with records as their subject or medium, this groundbreaking exhibition examined the record’s transformative power from the 1960s to the present. Through sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, sound work, video and performance, The Record combined contemporary art with outsider art, audio with visual and fine art with popular culture.

The exhibition featured work by 41 artists, including rising stars in the contemporary art world (William Cordova, Robin Rhode, Dario Robleto), outsider artists (Mingering Mike), well-established artists (Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Carrie Mae Weems) and artists whose work was shown in a U.S. museum for the first time (Kevin Ei-ichi deForest, Jeroen Diepenmaat, Taiyo Kimura, Lyota Yagi). Trevor Schoonmaker, Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum, organized the exhibition. The Record opened at the Nasher Museum and traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, the Miami Art Museum, now the Perez Art Museum and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle.

Best, Rarest & Most Unexpected

Duke students enjoy The Record at a party for first-year students. Photo by J Caldwell.

Since the heyday of vinyl, and through its decline and recent resurgence, a surprising number of artists have worked with vinyl records, Schoonmaker pointed out. The Record presented some of the best, rarest and most unexpected examples. The artists in the exhibition use the vinyl record as metaphor, archive, artifact, icon, portrait or transcendent medium.

The exhibition included a broad range of works, such as a hybrid violin and record player, Viophonograph, a seminal work by Laurie Anderson; David Byrne’s original life-sized Polaroid photomontage used for the cover of the 1978 Talking Heads album More Songs About Buildings and Food; a monumental column of vinyl records by Cordova; and an important early work by Robleto, who transformed Billie Holiday records in an alchemic process to create hand-painted buttons. Works by Christian Marclay, who has made art with records for 30 years, included his early and rarely seen Recycled Records as well as his most recent record video, Looking for Love.

Two Major Commissions

The Nasher Museum commissioned two works for The Record. Berlin-based artist Satch Hoyt created a 16-foot canoe made of red 45-rpm records with an original soundscape during his 2009 artist residency at Duke. New York artist Xaviera Simmons created photographs of the North Carolina landscape and solicited musical responses from musicians such as Mac McCaughan of Superchunk, Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio and Jim James of My Morning Jacket. The original songs were pressed onto a 12-inch record and played with her installation.

Cover to Cover

Accompanying The Record was Cover to Cover, an installation that featured eight artists and musicians who each curated a crate of 20 albums which told a story through the cover visuals. Visitors perused the crates and listened
with headphones to vinyl records on turntables. Crate artists included Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Rodney Graham, Harrison Haynes, Vik Muniz and Cafi and 9th Wonder.

Xaviera Simmons, Session Three: Player, Thundersnow Road, from the project Thundersnow Road, North Carolina, 2010. Color photograph. Commissioned by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Courtesy of the artist. With accompanying song, “Of The Mother Again,” written, recorded and performed by Yim Yames with Dave Givan on drums.

Xaviera Simmons, Session One: Around The Y from the project Thundersnow Road, North Carolina, 2010. Color photograph. Commissioned by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Courtesy of the artist. With accompanying song, “Two Tracks” written by Austin McCutchen.

Acquisitions from the Exhibition

In the months leading up to The Record, and as the exhibition traveled around the country, the Nasher Museum acquired works by artists in the show. Afro-Peruvian artist William Cordova created a work on paper and also a column of 3,000 reclaimed vinyl records, entitled Greatest Hits (para Micaela Bastidas, Tom Wilson y Anna Mae Aquash). Japanese artist Taiyo Kimura’s five-minute video, Haunted by You, features scenes of the artist and record players. Two sculptures and three videos by Christian Marclay, who lives and works in London and New York, are
also inspired by records and music. Other works acquired from The Record include Texas-based artist Dario Robleto’s monumental triptych of imagined record album covers; four photographs by New York artist Xaviera Simmons, from her project Thundersnow Road, North Carolina (commissioned for The Record); five canvas panels by Peruvian artist Alice Wagner, made with colored thread and wax;
a nine-panel suite of photographs by South African artist Robin Rhode; a 1989 work by Carrie Mae Weems, Ode to Affirmative Action.